music, memories, and microfiction from TK Major

Monthly Archives: July 2006

When I think of rich people I’ve known, I always forget about Howard Hughes.

Well, I didn’t know him, personally, but an ex-GF’s mom had been a very good friend of Hughes’ second wife, the actress, Jean Peters. Peters threw a party at Hughes’ estate for my GF’s little sister on the occasion of her baptism or confirmation or… something or other.

At one point, my ex-GF said, Hughes himself came out of an upstairs study, stood by a balustrade for a moment, looking down on scores of little girls in frilly dresses, shook his head, and went back into his study.

Yeah… that was my first brush with the super rich.

It didn’t really change my life.

But my intimate connection with Hughes didn’t really end there. Later, I would become friends with the daughter of Hughes’ most famous biographer, whose unpublished manuscript was stolen and became the basis for an infamous hoax, a Hughes “autobiography” that turned out to be eerily close to reality because it was based on years of my friend’s father’s reporting. (He went on to have a bestseller of his own but that’s another story.)

I go on at length really only to show that I have no clue how the super wealthy live their lives or how they think.

Hughes was a driven man, clearly, he made a fortune in aircraft and then, perhaps drawn in by his dalliances with starlets and actresses, became a movie exec and producer.

He was, in the thinking of the time, about as rich as God’s older brother but the end of his life was shrouded in mystery as a group of former CIA and other intelligence officers insinuated themselves as his “handlers” — allowing or encouraging doctors to keep Hughes, himself, loaded on deadening painkillers, barbiturates, and powerful opiates and hypnotics.

Hughes reportedly stopped cutting his hair and fingernails, and an incipient obsessive compulsive disorder began manifesting itself, perhaps aggravated or even caused by the powerful drug cocktails that kept him in a semi-stupor while his supposed assistants ran his empire in ways that often seemed contrary to his own interests but which, perhaps not surprisingly, seemed to benefit both the handlers and their associates in the US intel and covert action communities.

Don’t ask me how I ended up doing this twice in three weeks… I had my mind on other, thoroughly mundane things like trying to make a living, mastering evolving toolsets, and meeting yeterday’s challenges tomorrow… or something like that. It’s not all a blur but I kind of wish it was.

Anyhow, this seems to be a better version in some ways, though both are painfully sloppy (yeah, like that makes them stand out, here) and both are far from living up to the song’s potential. It’s this damn heat and humidity… it sits on the brain like a hot, steamy fog…

She’s got eyes just like a china dollThey look painted onand yet they’ve seen it all

All around Long Beach
and all the way to LA
the shattered lives are scattered
the hearts are spiked up on staves
— From the Ocean to the mountains
from the birthplace to the grave
Once you behold her
nothing will ever be the same

She’s got eyes just like a china doll They look painted on and yet they’ve seen it all

Everywhere you go
everythings about the same
they wander around dazed
just barely whispering her name
— They walk in front of buses
they throw themselves under trains
but the sick smile on their faces
show those sorry saps are still glad she came

[bridge]well I looked into her eyes and I saw my life flash by Now I wake up screaming everytime I see a doll’s eyes

I looked into the void and I saw myself fall in i see it every time i see it in her eyes t’s always been

Here I stand the last man to fall
under her spell
a moment close to heaven
an ice age on the cold side of hell
and how can I face
the other lost souls I find
When I laughed at all of them and then now
here am I the last in line

She’s got eyes just like a china doll They look painted on and yet they’ve seen it all

He should have E~ g#m g#m
seen it coming
but he never dreamed
he’d ever have to watch her leave
She laughed all the way to Austin
And she cried the rest of the
way to New Orleans

Baby Doll, it’s all because of you g#m ~ f#m
You always sew destruction
No matter what ya say you’re trying to do
Now always get
whatever it is
you want
and as long as I’ve known you
You always want
what you ain’t got

I have known you
such a long long time
and you know I wouldn’t say
it if it wasn’t true
You don’t have a heart I know
but I’m recently convinced there’s no soul
inside of you

Yesterday’s toys you
throw them all away
you dont even watch
to see their paper hearts in the flames
Like a goddess before
the gods learned how to feel
In your universe your world is the
only one that’s real

bridge:c#m ~ g#m ~
(look here baby)
Baby I got the map on you
Every lie you tell
I can drill right through
Baby Doll the fall is coming soon
and when it falls
it’s all gonna be on you

He shoulda E~ g#m g#mseen it comingbut he never dreamedhe’d have to watch her leave